In the beginning, there was a tired, redheaded “cyber guy”. He’d just gotten off over 24 hours of flights with his partner, cutting their holiday short and returning with their tail between their legs to their home country before all intermediate countries closed their borders.

He was supposed to go to Brisbane 2 days later to present at a conference, but that had already been cancelled. There were murmurs that other cons would have to cancel, and we’d all have to go into isolation.

Less than 12 hours later, ComfyCon AU had a logo, an organisational team with mentors, a RedBubble store for merch, a website, and an EOI for speakers.

We had 1200 people sign up (though we didn’t require sign ups), from numerous countries (Australia, New Zealand, Germany, UAE, Indonesia), 103 sales of merch (with multiple items per sale), and over 16 hours of footage to cut into chunks by the end of the 2 days.

And a community brought together in really difficult circumstances.